There’s a lot of wine information out there, but not a lot of good advice on how to get started and what to learn first. Fortunately, with a little direction, you can gain lots of wine wisdom (and confidence) in a very short period of time. This guide intends to offer an outline on how to improve your wine knowledge — even if you’re starting from the very beginning.

Why Learn About Wine?

Becoming wine savvy isn’t for everyone. But it’s the best way for wine drinkers to enhance their social experiences and gain an improved sense of taste. There are some significant side benefits too: you’ll become more confident buying wine and be able to taste differences in quality. Of course, learning to identify wine quality can be so eye-opening that you may never see grocery store wine the same again, so if you prefer to maintain your blissful ignorance, it’s best to stop reading now.

If however, you’re ready to crack the code and understand your wine from the inside out, let’s get started!

Change the Way You Drink

The first step you must take if you want to improve your wine knowledge is to immediately change the way you drink. Keep in mind that the goal is to alter the way you buy and consume wine so that you can make better-informed choices and have a higher level of awareness. When you remember that goal, every time you taste wine suddenly becomes an opportunity to add to your wine knowledge. Changing the way you drink, means that you:

This simple adjustment isn’t something that requires your full attention all the time. Just be sure to take good notes and after you’ve recorded your thoughts, you can get back to enjoying wine for its effect.

Start Your Personal Wine Challenge

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a beginner or an expert, we all have more to learn about wine. With that in mind, here is a 3-step personal wine challenge tailor-made for beginners.

Am I a wine beginner?

If you don’t know how to describe tannin and acidity in wine, and you’re mostly unaware of the range of wine varieties and styles available at your local wine shop, then chances are you are a beginner. So, congratulations for challenging yourself to learn more!

Here are the first steps to take to improve your wine knowledge:

Step 1: Basic Wine Traits

First things first, what is wine? Wine is described as an alcoholic beverage made with fermented